May 25, 1920

To create a commission with the task of, within a two-week period:

1) working out measures for the unification of all procurement of grain and raw materials in one department, or with a sufficiently firm and expedient co-ordination of the relevant departments for this purpose. The obligatory use of the cooperative apparatus.

2) The commission must in particular examine the question of the application of the food army and troops of internal security to the procurement of all kinds of raw materials, and then the conditions and concrete scale of the application of bonuses and commodity exchange (as a general rule, collective), and in particular the return to the peasants of part of the raw materials they have delivered in the form of processed products.

3) The application everywhere of assessment quotas to the procurement of raw materials is mandatory, as are fixed prices.

[Note from the Sbornik edition:]

** The draft written by V. I. Lenin was adopted by the Council of People's Commissars on May 25, 1920.

[On the same page of the Sbornik also appears:]

On May 18, 1920, the Council of People's Commissars adopted the following resolution: "Written reports must be issued over the signature of the People's Commissar, and the answers to questions put by the delegation in their questionnaire must be directed, already translated if possible into English, to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, to Comrade Vladimirsky. Comrade Vladimirsky is instructed to communicate with the ECCI commission on the necessity of publishing a brochure in English setting forth the history of the establishment of Soviet power and the attitude of the other political parties towards Soviet power" (protocol No. 368, item 3).

EXCHANGE OF NOTES BETWEEN V. I. LENIN, I. V. STALIN, AND S. M. KIROV*
May 25, 1920

[Lenin:] In my opinion, one should ask Kirov or Sergo.

[Stalin:] Ginis has been arrested in connection with the discovery in Baku of speculation in platinum. At the office of Ginis the Special Section seized 45 pounds of platinum. It is assumed that the platinum was being prepared for export abroad. Permit me to clarify the details on the spot in Baku, where I shall be in a week.
S. Kirov

[Lenin:] Kirov should undertake to send a telegram about this affair within a week of his arrival.
Lenin

[Kirov:] Good.
Kirov

* The exchange of notes was conducted in the margins of a telegram received by V. I. Lenin on May 24, 1920, from Baku, requesting the release from arrest of S. P. Ginis.